Dear LPG, 

While a lot of people make a point of keeping up with what is going on in the world, I have heard so many people say that the television news, for them, often represents a break in the schedule that gives them a reason to stop giving the screen their full attention for a while. As soon as it starts, I often do a bit of washing up or hoovering, and the evening news allows me to get my dinner ready to watch the following programme as I eat it.  I habitually leave it on and listen as I catch the odd bits of information about what is happening in the world, and I wait for the programme I want to see to come on.

Like many people, we never pay too much attention because so much news is terrible.  Someone will have run amuck with a gun in the US, or there will be something similar happening in the UK with a knife involved unless there is a political story to be told. Then there will be all the stories about how many millions of pounds the government plans to spend on some project that will have little effect on anything I think makes sense, and once they start talking about millions and billions, they have lost me anyway.

There will be news of whatever war is going on as part of the mix and pictures of the rubble that replaced the houses of the people who used to live there, together with how many soldiers and civilians have been injured or killed.  I will spare a thought for them and genuinely feel sorry for their plight, but then the next story will be featured, as will my empathic focus.  I think that for many, the news, in general, has stopped shocking us. Still, for the past week, I have seen all the news about the Beverly Hills wildfires and learned that they have affected many rich and famous people, but I have been thinking very little of it.  

If anything, one passing thought that recurred in my mind as I looked through my front window was that beyond it, for most of the week when those fires were at their worst, the weather I could see was freezing, wet and cloudy, as it nearly always is in UK January in contrast to the heat of the fires in a part of the world whose weather I often envied.

For the first couple of days it was being reported on, it was just another bit of trouble in another part of the world. I have watched the odd drama that tells a similar tale with convincing staged backdrops. Still, one day, I was looking at the television screen when it showed a few pictures of the devastation that accompanied the aftermath of what had occurred. They looked much like other parts of the war-torn world, but there was one difference. 

Many people talking about their loss were ordinary people who I will never again see on the screen, and I momentarily felt genuinely bad for them; the moment passed, and time moved on to the next news item.  But what caught my attention most was that many victims of this disaster were celebrities who we assume have everything.  I looked on the internet at a few articles listing the affected celebrities. While they probably have all the insurance, they will have lost irreplaceable prize possessions.

The sobering thought for me is that none of us know when we will have to leave our homes in a hurry. If nothing else, what has happened there and the reality that it has happened to high-profile people, as well as Joe public, is a brutal reminder that we don’t have to be old and relatively poor to find ourselves with little notice of having to leave our homes for the last time.

It crossed my mind that this can happen to anyone, no matter how comfortably off we may be, and the older we get, the higher the possibility.   So perhaps it has to be worth taking a little time out each week to sort out just one bit of your home (the contents of a box, a drawer or a cupboard shelf) while keeping in mind what you would take and what you would leave if you were told that your next walk through your particular front door would be the final time you do that. 

No doubt, by the time LPG can post my message, it will be over, bar the shouting, and the repair process will be the new topic, but perhaps there are lessons to be learned for all.

WG, Beckenham

WG has found some of the news items that inspired her thoughts…

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